By now I’m owning several tablets that I don’t use for anything, they’re just collecting dust. But they’re too slow/old for using them for anything fun or important – so now I’ve found a good use for them: as info-panels on the wall.

What that means is: I place various useful widgets (email, rss-reader, news, weather) on multiple homescreens, and let the tablet switch between the homescreens every 5 minutes.

This way I always have my emails, feeds, posts, notes, news, weather, server-checks and tons of other useful information in direct view.

With your launcher, create as many homescreens as you need, e.g. 2 or 3. You should leave one homescreen for standard links to apps you need, app drawer, launcher settings, etc.

Place all widgets you might find useful on your homescreens – make sure not to leave any unused space. With e.g. Apex Launcher you can disable margins, which is a good idea.

In your display settings, set text size to huge – so you can also read text from further away.

When satisfied with the widgets positioning and amount, open Tasker app, and create a “Task” with this rules:Go Home (Page 0), Wait 5 minutes, Go Home (Page 1), Wait 5 minutes, Go Home (Page 2), Wait 5 minutes, Goto Action Number 1;
(as seen in this screenshot)
Of course modify it so it fits to your homescreen-amount and numbers, waiting times, etc. – you may also first want to set it to 5 seconds instead minutes for testing, to see if it works as it should. Tap the play icon and watch.

Last time I checked, there was no working Jailbreaking tool available for iOS 8+ … well, that’s changed. I’ve just successfully jailbroken my iPad Mini (iOS 8.1.2) with the “Taig Tool”. Not sure what to think of it from a security standpoint, but the Jailbreak def. worked nicely and very easily – finally I have Cydia available again now, which makes my iOS device a little less useless.

By now, there are countless videos on Youtube that count all the odd events and unanswered questions about 9/11, an avalanche started with the video “Loose change“. I must say, many of those videos are fixated on some pixel artifacts, bad cameras or they’re mostly based on assumptions.

But there’s one rather new video that asks 50 questions that have not been answered yet, and it’s doing so on a scientific basis – e.g. with the help of the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

This means this video with the name “September 11 – The New Pearl Harbor” is the next generation of 9/11 conspiracy videos, which answers to all the “debunkers” who tried to defame the first people that asked questions. Imho a must-see (may take a bit before it starts):

So register a domain, login, get to the domain management and select your domain. On the next page, click “Miscellanous -> Dynamic DNS” and enable it.

The next step is to configure a dynamic DNS updater for your DynDNS service. On Linux, just install the ddclient package (“apt-get install ddclient“) and edit /etc/ddclient.conf (“nano /etc/ddclient.conf“).

For use with a namecheap-based dynamic DNS service via own domain, the configuration file would look like this:

So instead for “myowndomain.com” you enter your domain;
for “Password” you enter the password displayed in the namecheap DynDNS management page;
for “mysubdomain” you enter the subdomain of your domain that’s supposed to lead to your IP.

When configured, the ddclient will refresh the domain mysubdomain.myowndomain.com every 60 seconds with your IP.

The app works via OpenVPN-UDP protocol and spares you the trouble of configuring the VPN – just enter username+password, select a server and connect

Oh, and if you’re looking for a way to automatically connect to the VPN via NFC tags / stickers, then you should read this article; That way you can easily connect to the VPN by just holding your phone near a NFC tag. Nice!

There are quite a few methods to access and modify your Dropbox content from Linux command-line, but this one is far the best. It’s called “Dropbox-Uploader” by Andrea Fabrizi, but it can do basically anything; far more than just uploading stuff.

Download the script, make it executable, put it in /usr/bin and start it:

1) Open: https://www2.dropbox.com/developers/apps2) Click on “Create App”, then select “Dropbox API app”3) Select “Files and datastores”4) Now go on with the configuration, choosing the app permissions and access restrictions (a/f) to your Dropbox folder5) Enter the “App Name” that you prefer (e.g. MyUploader1234123)6) Click the “Create App” button7) Type or copy+paste the app key, app secret and permission type shown in the confirmation page.8) Visit the URL mentioned by the script (looks like this: https://www2.dropbox.com/1/oauth/authorize?oauth_token=JcQs2JpkPIDovWix)9) Confirm that you want to allow the app to access your Dropbox, and press enter in the script; it will exit now.10) Run the script again to get all commands displayed: dropbox.sh

For a long time I was missing a proper way to auto-mount my TrueCrypt volume and start apps stored in it (yeye, I know, that reduces the security somewhat).
Although TrueCrypt has some auto-mount feature, that never really worked for me.

So googled a bit, found this useful batchfile that does the trick for me;
You’ll need to modify the parts I marked bold accordingly to meet your files’n’other stuff.
Means, make sure that

First I was happy to see Dungeon Keeper in the GooglePlay market , since part one of the PC version was an endless source of fun. So installed, played tutorial and tested all featured. Up to that point it was quite fun.

But suddenly one is forced to buy “gems”, that’s the ingame credit currency. A usable amount of gems costs 80 EUR. Now I admit, in-app-purchases are a great option to offer nice apps/games to endusers for free – as long as it is only to get premium content or make the gameplay easier/faster. Thousands of apps have proven that this system works and that it’s not difficult to find a compromise that keeps the game enjoyable even if you don’t spend a single cent, while still generating decent earnings for the developer from optional premium content sales.

Again, it’s obviously extremely easy not to piss of all the users, e.g. by

users being able to get free credits by watching advertising videos

or doing surveys

or installing apps from other developers

allowing to exchange different types of credits with each other

etc… the possibilities to give credits for tasks / advertising or other things are basically endless.

In short, as long as the developer leaves users a way to enjoy the game without having to spend money, while mainly using in-app-purchases for premium content / making the game easier or faster, then the system works.

EA has proven here how not to do it, just like they did with their Simpsons-TappedOut game. Once you played the tutorial of Dungeon Keeper, you’re forced to buy gems in order to keep playing – otherwise you need to wait days for a single action to complete, while being unable to do additional actions simultaneously.

It’s a huge money scam. As a result I have installed DungeonKeeper Gold (PC-version) on my Android device via a DOSbox emulator – get it here:

Of course you can use any other DOSBox emulator for Android, but you’ll need to optimize the config file manually then to ensure that sound is working and the game is not lagging. Cycles should be set to max, for the necessary Sound-settings see the config file for AnDOSBox.

After installing the custom ROM “ProBam Kitkat” (which is great, by the way), my attention was brought onto a few things I should have used long ago already.

WhisperPush is a system for encrypting SMS & MMS. It’s integrated into CyanogenMod, and has now luckily also been integrated by default into various other Android custom-ROMs. For explanation, WhisperPush is the name for the SMS encryption client that is used on various stock ROMs.

It is based on and compatible to TextSecure – that again is an app everyone can install on his Android device to encrypt SMS & MMS independent of what ROM is being used.

Then there’s also RedPhone – which does the same, but for your calls. As for most client-to-client encryption tools, the connection and content is only encrypted when your call/SMS partner is also using a compatible encryption tool.

If your partner is not using a compatible encryption tool, neither him nor you will notice any difference in quality or handling, everything works as usual.

If you know a bit about how IRC-chats exactly work, then you should be worried about your privacy – especially how easily it is for server-admins to read your private messages.

Sure, you could exclusively use DCC-chats instead of normal queries (PMs). But usually they get as often properly established as the DCC-file transfers (never), so you’ll revert back to normal queries most of the time, if not always.

Since the administrators of IRC-servers (server-ops) can read your private messages within an IRC network easily in plaintext, you should just always expect that everything you type in queries is as publicly visible as posting them in an open channel.

Luckily there’s a mIRC plugin that can help this by encrypting all traffic with blowfish. Of course this only works if your chat partner is also using this plugin – otherwise the chat reverts back to plaintext. So if you’re worried about your private messages in IRC, get you and your usual chatpartners to install the FiSH plugin.

I’m not aware of such a plugin for xChat, though since mIRC is better in all regards anyway, this should be just another reason to switch to mIRC.

The installation is pretty straight-forward and mentioned in the README.TXT of the archive. Here’s the important part:

## INSTALLINGDon’t shy away, the guide below is just verbose, installing is easy!Setting up FiSH 10 should be pretty straightforward as patching mirc.exe is no longerrequired. If you have been using FiSH.dll before, it is however strongly recommendedthat you restore mirc.exe to its unpatched, original state before you install FiSH 10.You can of course apply a “crack” after that, but mIRC is a good product, so if you useit every day, I strongly advise you to get a legit lifetime license.Alright, now on to the actual installing procedure. If you have not been using FiSH.dllbefore, or if you are installing mIRC 7 from scratch, you can skip this paragraph.1. Unload FiSH.mrc from mIRC like so: `//unload -rs $shortfn($nofile($mircexe) $+ FiSH.mrc)`2. (Unload `blow.mrc`, `blowcrypt.mrc`, `mircryption.mrc`, etc.)3. Delete `FiSH.dll`4. Delete `FiSH.mrc`5. (Delete `DH.dll` `blowfish.dll` `bloW.dll`)6. Keep! `blow.ini`Now that your mIRC installation is clean, we can move on to the actual installing part.* Download the latest zip file from http://github.com/flakes/mirc_fish_10/downloads(if you haven’t already)* Shut down mIRC!* Extract fish_10.dll, fish_inject.dll and fish_10.mrc to your mirc.exe folder.Do the same with libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll if your download contains them.* If necessary, extract blow.ini-EXAMPLE and rename the file to “blow.ini”.* You can edit fish_10.mrc if your blow.ini is at a different location than that folder.* This is useful for people who installed mIRC into Program Files but keep their settingsin the Users/AppData folder.** Start mIRC back up. If your mIRC is automatically connecting on startup, you mighthave to turn that off, or add a timer. It is extremely important that fish_10.mrcalways loads before ANY IRC connection is made.* Install the script: //load -rs $shortfn($nofile($mircexe) $+ fish_10.mrc)* Shut down mIRC, and start it again* Two lines like this should show up (and no error popup):*** FiSH 10 *** by [c&amp;f] *** fish_inject.dll compiled XXX XX 2011 12:00:00 ****** FiSH 10 *** by [c&amp;f] *** fish_10.dll compiled XXX XX 2011 12:00:00 **** If that is the case, FiSH 10 is now ready for action!* Connect to your networks and do your thing.

If you’re using TrueCrypt to save any data secure and encrypted, maybe passwords and other login-data, maybe whole partitions, then keep reading. TrueCrypt claims to be open-source, so you might think “someone surely has analyzed its code to make sure it doesn’t send all my data to someone”.

Yea, you’d think that. I did, too. Until I was made aware of the fact that this hasn’t been done yet. Please read and forward:

The Google Play market is full of MMORPGs – but the result of testing lots of them is: They’re mostly trash. But there are 2 remarkable exceptions: Avabel & Arcane Legends.

Both cause the known the known WoW effect very quickly and easily: “Just one level, then I can go to sleep!”. So you’re quickly spending all your free time on them and forget any social interactions. They’re almost perfect – Arcane Legends for example, achieves an easy-to-play mix of Diablo and World-of-Warcraft, while Avabel delivers astonishing graphics. Give them both a try – see videos below:

Users of the Google Chrome browser for Android or iOS now have a new feature available: the data compression setting (Settings > Bandwidth Management > Reduce data usage). It promises faster browsing on all pages except SSL (https) or when using incognito mode – and yeah, it delivers. Browsing is noticeable faster, less data is being transferred. I’m just shocked how many people gladly use it without even knowing how it works.

In short: All your traffic will be sent and received through Google Proxyservers, which compress the data before transferring it to you. This results in less data usage and quicker loading of websites.

So far, so good – but what do you think gets done with all the data you gladly provide Google with? Of course it gets logged, saved permanently, used for advertising purposes and more. Even with SSL (https) traffic excluded, so that your onlinebanking for example is still secure, this remains a tool you should not use unless you’re okay with Google knowing every single byte you send and receive. Probably you also have a Google account, so all the data is linked to your identity not just by IP, but also by all the data Google already has on you.
Google might say otherwise, but don’t be dumb – don’t believe everything you’re told.

If you’re using cheating tools like “Game Killer” or “SB Game Hacker” on Android, and they stopped working since you’ve updated your ROM – e.g. hanging, not reacting to input, keys not displaying – which happened for me on SGS4-i9505 using PacManRom Nightly – then keep reading.

The issue is related to being rooted – which you need to be anyway to use the apps – but I’ve noticed that ROMs using Superuser as root-tool seem to have problems with game modification tools. There’s an easy fix:

Superuser itself seems to be the problem – so I tried to use SuperSU instead – et voila, everything works perfectly again after starting SuperSU and patching the SU binary (I used the “normal” method)

So in short – try installing SuperSU, run it, let it patch the SU binary and test if Game Hacker / Game Killer work properly again.

Oh, and by the way – the same goes if you have problems with the app FolderMount – that App2SD-mover that moves directories to SD and mounts them there. A wonderful and useful tool for ROMs/devices that don’t support moving apps to external SD card due to kernel limitations. If not working, install SuperSU, run it and let it patch – and FolderMount works again.

You’re copying files from A to B with the standard copy function of Windows? Okay, that may be sufficient for small and few files, but you’re probably getting angry each time you need to copy many and/or big files. Obviously, since the Win copy function…

can’t resume the copy process (if aborted, you have to begin from start)

is very slow

is unreliable

offers not a single setting

offers no filters (e.g. overwrite if file is different etc.)

Years ago, the first good alternative to the Windows copy function was the application TotalCopy. It offered exactly what is needed, but it doesn’t work well with newer Windows versions.

I’ve mentioned BOINC & Seti@Home various times on my blog already (see related posts below), described ways to get it work on alternative devices, recommended related tools etc.

But I haven’t really told those who don’t know it what it actually is and does – and especially why you – everybody – should use it; if alone as screensaver, so that your normal work is not being affected.

But let’s start at the beginning: What is BOINC & Seti@Home?In short, BOINC is an application available for various operating system that uses your systems free resources (CPU/GPU power) for processing calculations. What calculations? Well, that depends on what project you’re going to attach your BOINC client application to. Each project has different aims, goals and purposes. A list with descriptions of available projects can be found here: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Project_list

For example, there are projects that use your machines spare processing power to research new medical drugs, find prime numbers, predict earthquakes, map the universe, etc. The most projects are either doing something for the greater good of humanity, processing mathematical or cryptographic calculations, etc… So you just need to download the BOINC client for your machine, select a project that meets your interests and let it run. You get rewarded with points to climb up a ranking list – this is just to see your progress compared to other users or teams.

Now the project I’m using is also one of the most famous and oldest – Seti@Home. If you haven’t heard about it yet, Seti stands for “Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence” – so search for life in outta space. That may sound odd, but it’s a realistic goal and interesting idea. Assuming that there are intelligent species out there, they should also transmit data over radiofrequencies like we do. For example, our radio and TV signals have already travelled dozens of lightyears and might have reached other species. Seti@Home listens for non-natural signals in frequencies that we are receiving – it tries to filter out the background noise of space and looks for any artificial signals which can’t originate from natural phenomenons.

Imagine you’re the one Seti@Home user that finds and processes the first extra-terrestrial signal! Not only you’d be famous, you could also be pretty proud of yourself.

Now don’t think that BOINC is taking away all your computers resources so that working on it gets impossible. The BOINC-client has numerous settings that you can use to restrict the processing to only the part you’re not using. That allows you to either let it running all the time and use unused resources, or you configure it as screensaver; that ensures that BOINC is only working while you’re not using your machine anyway. See below for a screenshot of the BOINC screensaver and all related important links you’ll need:

With lack of understanding for such people, I’m wondering about those people still using Internet Explorer for their daily browsing. Okay, for a while it was fast and easy to use – but now the only reason to use IE should be for testing stuff on multiple browsers.

Before you agree with me: I don’t understand why people are using Google Chrome on their Desktop machines either. Agreed, it is fast – I admit, before I learned about Chromium, I’ve been using it on Desktop and Mobile as well. But now? Nah!

Let’s summarize why Chrome is bad:

Location services: By default, Chrome transmits your location and god knows what other stuff to Google. Even when disabling all the related settings and installing all the privacy extensions there are, Chrome keeps happily transmitting your location in many ways – which brings us to the next point:

Traffic snooping: Think what you want, but even analyzing all the traffic Chrome sends won’t reveal what it’s doing while you’re not looking. Google has high interest in seeing what you do with your browser. You shouldn’t use GoogleDNS either, although it’s damn fast. Why do you think they offer a free, public DNS service, if not for collecting all your domain queries? Google knows everything, and that’s not just restricted to their search machine.

Closed source: Although Chrome is based on the open-source browser Chromium (which by the way should be preferred over Chrome for exactly this reason), the public can’t peek into the source to see what wrongdoings are in there. So feel free to expect things in there that you wouldn’t want in there.

Mainstream: Most people I know using Chrome are using it – besides the obvious speed advantage – just because everyone else is using it. Can that be a reason to do something? Have a bridge nearby?

The list would go on, but I’m sure you get the point. You don’t think there is a good alternative with the same advantages? Then you didn’t look well enough. Keep reading!

False sense of privacy: If you seriously think that browsing with Chrome keeps your traffic private and secure, you’re a lost cause. At least consider using Chromium instead – here you can be sure that someone is watching the sourcecode for things that don’t belong in there.

Easy & Simple for Newbies: Okay, Chrome is made intuitive and simple, but c’mon, they’ve gone over the top with that. Would you really admit that using Firefox is too complicated for you? Is it that hard?

Again, I could go on – but I’m sure you get the point. Now for quick access and overview, here’s all the software you really need:

Firefox Aurora: Aurora is the Beta version of Firefox – so by using it, you can enjoy updates, optimizations and many other advantages earlier than users of the normal Firefox version can. It’s been tested by all the Nightly users, so no need to fear bugs or other problems.

Firefox Nightly: Nightly is the alpha version of Firefox – all the new features, improvements and other nice things you can already enjoy long before Firefox Standard or Aurora users can. But expect crashes and bugs every now and then, it’s not a beta – it’s an alpha version. Make sure to try the Android version – I love it!

Addons FasterFox and MemoryFox: Using this extensions for Firefox improves browsing and overall system performance significantly. Try using the custom setting of FasterFox and play with all the settings, you won’t be disappointed. Also – MemoryFox has the nice feature of also improving the memory usage of other apps on your system as well.

TCPOptimizer: A must-have tool for every Windows user; it tweaks lots of system-settings and can improve the throughput and latency of your internet connection dramatically. For tweaks on other operating systems, check out HMA’s Speed tweaking article.

Chromium: Chromium is the open-source webbrowser that Google Chrome is based on. That should be more than enough of a reason to use it.

Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Ahya, and note that Chromium, Firefox Nightly/Aurora are available for all major OS, even mobile!

Today I’d like to bring your attention to a nice tool I’ve started using recently: BoincTasksIf you’re running Boinc on multiple devices, you’ve probably noticed that there’s no proper way or tool to view the progress of all your hosts together. The usual Boinc-watchers can only connect to one host. That’s over now, thanks to BoincTasks.Although the interface needs a bit getting used to and you may spot small glitches or bugs, the advantages of this tool are clearly in the majority:

View an unlimited amount of hosts

Tons of options and settings to play with

Also offers interface via webserver, so usable on every internet capable device

Replaces the Boinc GUI

It’s completely free

Lots of languages included

Support for Win, Mac, Linux (though Mac+Linux might need a bit tweaking to get it running)

While looking for the smallest USB stick with the most space, I stumbled upon the SanDisk Cruzer Fit – available in 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 GB with same size.

The reviews showed that the performance was poor, but expected with that tiny size. The 64 GB version is far too expensive (more than triple what the 32 GB costs), so I decided to get the 32 GB version for below 20 EUR.

So I’m okay with the performance – all in all, the only negative thing with this product is that the little ear for attaching the stick onto a keyring is far too small for usual keyrings.
Means, you either need supersmall keyrings, or attach it with a string.
Good is that the case doesn’t get loose or falls off, and that the ear for attaching is on the stick, not the case.

I can recommend this (at least the 32 GB version) to anyone who wants to have as many GBs as possible – on the smallest space possible. Perfect for backup, portable apps, and all other data you might possibly need on-the-go.

Never watching “real” TV and instead only watching downloaded series all the time has one disadvantage – lots of stuff happens that one doesn’t know about. Watching news seems to be important after all, it seems.

So while browsing through Wikipedia’s toplists of the most horrific catastrophes and massacres, I’ve stumbled upon the “List of rampage killers” – as usual, sortable by victim number – must love Wikipedia! *g*
Anyway, I must have been in a coma or sleeping or whatever, but for some reason I was completely unaware of what happened on July 22nd 2011 in Norway – I’m speaking of the Oslo bombing – which itself is less spectacular, but connected to the Utøya massacre.

And as expected, for any catastrophe there is a “Seconds from Disaster” episode – in this case S06E01, title: “Norway Massacre – I was there“. Have fun:

Users of the latest beta from uTorrent might have noticed a new setting in the “Advanced” tab called “vpn.dark_mode“. Interesting is that neither the uTorrent help, uTorrent forums or Google know anything about this new setting!

The only effect it has for me is that all transfers stop. Connecting/disconnecting to VPN before or after modifying this setting (on/off) didn’t change anything.

So I’ll use my good Google ranking for finding out what this setting may mean… does anyone have an idea? Could it be related to “Dark Fibre“? Please comment!

Things that worked easily with mIRC scripting can get complicated when trying the same with x-Chat, e.g. in Perl. The idea was to make a script that listens for certain terms like “goodbye everyone” and then responds with “bye $nick” after a certain delay.

That can easily done with the sleep command, but this results in letting the xChat process hang completely for the time of the delay, ignoring user-input.

So I googled for a way to achieve this, but couldn’t find anything. Lastly, doing the whole thing with threads was a working solution;

But what if you only want to hide joins/parts/quites/voices/devoices per nickname or host?
So that only for some nicknames/hosts those messages are displayed, while for others they are not displayed? I searched a long time for a script like this but couldn’t find one that worked right for me, so I modified it a bit.

Here the perl script that does this job for you
Download the .pl zipped here: HideJoinPart.zip
Extract the .pl file somewhere, then load it via xChat menu.

Yesterday I received my SGS4 – finally. Having skipped the SGS3 but being very satisfied with my SGS2 in the past, I decided to pay the high price of 599 € for the SGS4.

Now before going over to the Pros and Cons of it, some basic but important information first that you should consider before getting the SGS4.

Speed: Depending on where you live, you can get either the i9500 or the i9505 – or you import the other version for a little more cash. According to my tests and the scores of AnTuTu-benchmark, the differences are rather small but obvious:
1. Fastest: i9500 (tweaked)
2. Fast: i9500 (stock)
3. Slower: i9505 (tweaked)
4. Slowest: i9505 (stock)
I don’t think you’ll notice the speed differences anywhere except in benchmarks; both versions are still much faster than other currently avail. smartphones. Still, basically the i9500 can be considered better than the i9505.

Color: watch what color-version you get exactly. When getting the “black-mist” color version, don’t expect it to be black. The phones back rather looks like the front of a microwave, very ugly. Of course you can just buy a cover of your favorite color separately.

Battery lifetime: the included battery (2600 mAh) simply sucks. No wonder with all that speed and gimmicks, so I recommend to get either a double-battery with extra back-cover (5500 mAh) or a normal-sized battery with at least 3500 mAh. Otherwise you’ll get annoyed by having to charge the SGS4 1-2 times daily.

MicroSIM: the SGS4 is using MicroSIM-cards. So either you get one, or cut your current SIM to a MicroSIM using the helpful image from my other blog post.

Moving apps to external SD: Very annoying is the fact that you cannot move apps or app-data to your external SD card with the current stock ROMs, so your internal storage will be full after installing a few apps (e.g. the integrated 16GB are actually only 9.25 GB, the rest is used for the system). The currently best workaround against this problem is using the great app Foldermount, which allows to create symlinks and move folders (like large app-data folders) to the external SD card.

Root and recovery installation

I’ve been using CF-Root and TWRP Recovery, other methods did not work for me.
Download: Odin v3.07 incl. SGS4i9505 CF-Root + TWRP Recovery 2.5.0.2:http://hmastuff.com/sgs4_rootandtwrprecovery.zip
(Enter download mode by press and holding Volume Down, Home and Power, then flash the .tar.md5 and .tar via PDA in Odin)

Many users of ChromeOS (e.g. on ChromeBooks or on virtual machines) probably noticed that they can’t connect via OpenVPN. This happens because ChromeOS at the moment only supports rather uncommon certificates/keys for it.

That leaves only L2TP as protocol of choice, since PPTP is not supported at all by ChromeOS.

But with a little workaround you can get OpenVPN working. ChromeOS is just another Linux distribution, so you can go into terminal mode and connect manually.

How this can be done is explained in the tutorial I wrote about it, you can find it here:

One is to use the extension Google Analytics Integration – it’s easy and works fine, but puts the script into the pages body instead of the header. That makes no difference in regards of it working properly, but it’s not the way Google wants us to do it.
The alternative is to just put the code into the skin.
Let’s say you’re using the Vector skin. Open the file /skins/Vector.php and search for this text:

Lastly, remove any usage of GoogleAnalytics related extensions from your LocalSettings.php to prevent double-use of the script. Now check your real-time stats in GoogleAnalytics to see if the script is active.

Although it’s now almost 12 years since the event, and everybody was bombarded with footage, watched videos over and over again – this one is a must-see. If you haven’t seen this documentary yet which was actually planned by the 2 French Naudet brothers to be just about the daily life of a firefighters squad, and then turned into one of the most important documentaries ever – then it’s time. It’s the only footage existing that shows the collapse of the towers from within them. I ripped the DVD to get the best quality and removed the black borders, that means this video has a higher quality than all other versions you’ll find online. Best viewed with Firefox or Chrome.

Related posts:

When trying to connect via OpenVPN on my Proxmox-based OpenVZ VPS, I always received this error message:

SIOCSIFADDR: No such device: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
SIOCSIFNETMASK: No such device
SIOCSIFMTU: No such device
SIOCSIFBRDADDR: No such device:
ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
Linux ifconfig failed: external program exited with error status: 255
Exiting

After googling a while, I found the fix for that. You need to modify the file “/etc/vz/vz.conf” on your host machine.
Look for the line “## IPv4 iptables kernel modules“.
The line below it should begin with “IPTABLES=“. Set it to this:

With the instructions from freetz.org (alt. newbie version) I’ve built a few firmware images for my AVM! FritzBox 7270 v3. So if you have that router and don’t want to build the firmware by yourself, you can download my version here:

It contains all many features, plugins, modules and everything else that sounded interesting during the selection in the compiling process.

You might also want to check out the image by hehnblog, he included his .config file, so you can use it as template for building your image. Included packages are amongst others: dsld, ip commands from the iproute package, dnsmasq, dropbear, traceroute, tcpdump, and iptables. Based on the German 3.74.05.50 image.

If the AVM webconfiguration refuses to install freetz, your options are:- switch the Annex drivers between A and B and/or remove the branding, then try again. I’ve done that with ruKernel (Download). It’s German but website has English tutorials- flash Freetz with ruKernel. I had to start it with parameter “-u2” to make the process work

Version 1.0: Due to the size limit for images, the archive contains an .external file that you can flash within the freetz webconfiguration onto an external USB device.

Version 2.0: This one is using the integrated Downloader for installation of apps. Plugin an USB stick, set the downloader to use http://hmastuff.com/freetz

Questions? Leave a comment!
Don’t know what freetz is? It’s a linux based operating system for Fritzbox routers, which is far more advanced than normal firmwares, allowing the installation of many different applications and server software, e.g. Torrent-client, VPN-clients/servers, Proxyservers/clients, etc.

Many cell service providers don’t send out Nano-SIM cards, which are needed for e.g. the iPad-mini. They expect you to order a normal SIM and once received, call their hotline to get the Nano version. This can take weeks and of course is annoying.

I found this image very useful, which helped me cutting down my SIM first to a MicroSIM and then down to a NanoSIM. Make sure to rather cut less and often than much.

Work on it till you can insert the NanoSIM into the cardholder, so that it’s not falling out by itself.
Worked fine for me

I was never really into MUD games, found ‘em boring without graphics. But this one, “Alternate Universe“, is really taking a look at. You have to solve a puzzle at the beginning (hint: look for a button to push *g*), then you come into the area where other players are. The possibilities are basically endless – and the most interesting part – its server runs on a Raspberry Pi!
To play, just telnet into alternateuniverse.dyndns.org 1063 – or use the applet below:

I’ve written 2 tutorials on how you can use any Linux device, e.g. the Raspberry Pi, but also similar devices like Linux-on-Android or even a virtual machine as VPN router.

Tutorial No. 1 explains how to use a local proxyserver on your linux device to share an OpenVPN connection along your network. You can even connect from outside of your network; in addition, this allows even devices with no VPN support to use the VPN connection. You will just need a little tool called tinyproxy, allow the client IPs and + needed ports in the tinyproxy.conf and connect to the VPN.

Tutorial No. 2 explains how to use a local PPTP server on your linux device to share an OpenVPN connection along your network. You can even connect from outside of your network; this method has the advantage that certain apps will not fallback to use your real IP, and your complete system is secured by the VPN – instead of only applications that support the use of proxies.

If you’re in need of a Debian image for the ODroid-X2 – you can just use the one from the X, download here: odroidx-debian-R2.rar (Magnet / Torrent). User/Pass is “odroidx“.

The image contains a 3 GB filesystem. When flashing it on a bigger SDcard using w32diskimager (odroid edition), you can resize the filesystem later on the X2 by running “resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p3” (not working? Then you need to recreate the 3rd partition. Here’s a log that shows you how I did it)

Don’t know what the ODroid-X2 is? It’s the fastest and best single-board-computer you can get at the moment. Where to get it? Here: hardkernel.com

Method 1) Mining via Android via LTCMiner
If you have a single-board-computer that runs Android (such as the Cubieboard, Gooseberry, APC Rock, OLinuXino, Hackberry etc.), you can just use the app LTCMiner. For downloads, see my blog post “Finally a working bitcoin miner for Android”

You might want to use StratumProxy rather than mining on a Pool directly, to make sure your miner is using the best mining methods.
Unfortunately devices like the Pi, OLinuXino, Hackberry, Cubieboard etc. only give around 290 khash/sec.

There are times when you might want to measure the maximal network throughput / bandwidth of your network devices via LAN or WLAN. This is especially useful if you want to compare the results between e.g. your wired Raspberry Pi, the wireless OLinuxino, Hackberry… or you just want to check if getting expensive network cables was worth it.

A pretty easy tool for doing this is PCATTCP / TTCP, download it here ->

If you own multiple Raspberry Pis or other single-board-computers, you might want to have a way to view and compare their processor and network usage as well as other system-related data.

A good tool for this is Ganglia, and it’s pretty easy to setup; just runapt-get install ganglia-monitor gmetad
on every computer that you want monitored. Ganglia is pretty lightweight, uses just around 5% CPU usage every few seconds.

Then you need to select a device that should host the webinterface to display all the data.
Make sure this device has apache2 and php5 installed (by just running “apt-get install apache2 php5“). On this device you extract the content of the “ganglia-web-3.5.7″ folder from this archive (download) into the /var/www folder.

That’s pretty much it – when now accessing the selected device via browser, you should see the Ganglia webinterface. It will automatically pick up all devices in the network that have Ganglia installed, and regularly produce informative graphs and usage data.
See their wiki for a quick-start guide:http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ganglia/wiki/ganglia_quick_start

If you’re looking for a good way to administrate and configure your Pi via webinterface, you should use Webmin; see my post CPanel vs. Webmin

Today I received my A13-OLinuXino-WIFI, mainly to be able to compare it with the Raspberry Pi and Cubieboard. As with the Cubieboard, Android is preinstalled on the NAND integrated storage of the OLinuXino A13. I decided to get the Wifi version (just $10 more) since I liked the idea of having a single-computer-board with WLAN without having to use an external WLAN dongle.

The user/pass are: root : olinuxino and there’s also a olinuxino : olinuxino user.
Once logged in, you might want to change the password via “passwd”.
Now you need to configure the network for the WLAN to work.
Run “ifconfig -a“. It should show you a loopback, a tun and a wlan device.
Important is here the number behind “wlan“, so “wlan1“, “wlan2” etc.

Next, open /etc/network/interfaces with nano or whatever editor you prefer.
Change the number behind the “wlan” here accordingly as ifconfig has shown you, so if the interfaces file says “wlan1” and ifconfig told you “wlan2“, make it “wlan2” here as well on both places (auto wlan2 + iface wlan2 inet dhcp). Then change the ssid and the psk accordingly as your WLAN is set.

UPDATE (28th March 2013): NativeBoinc now supports Seti@home without needing to use workarounds like the one below!!

Although there is NativeBoinc for Android, Seti@home will not work when being added as a project with it. There are rumors about an Android client from the Boinc developers which will hopefully include full support for all projects on various Android systems.

Till then, you’ll have to use a workaround to get Seti@home working on your Android device, by compiling and running Boinc on Linux within Android, and using NativeBoinc as manager only. Here is how to:

The advantage of the Pi is that it’s widely being used, so there is much more specialized software for it available, more information on the net, etc.
The advantage of the Cubieboard is clearly its better hardware; I especially like that it comes preinstalled with Android, and you can easily install Linux on a SDHC card or on an attached SATA hard drive – where the SATA slot is another advantage, of course.
If you need to decide – should you be after the faster mini-linux computer, get the Cubieboard. If you’re more after playing around with it and programming, get the Pi
BUT: If you’re after max. speed, you have to get the ODroid-X2!

There are other mini computers besides the Pi and Cubieboard, see below for links of all that are worth mentioning:

Billions of computers are running without doing anything, or at least without fully using their processing power and bandwidth. What a waste! Why not using your computers idle time for something useful, e.g. to fight diseases, share information and software, or crawl the web? See below for examples what you can let your computer/server do while you’re not using it:

apt-p2p: This linux-based package aims to reduce the usage of Linux distribution hosts by sharing packages to other users via DHT. Give it a try!

yacy: Yacy is a decentralized search-engine. You can install it on your computer or server and crawl the web, contributing to Yacy or creating your own search engine with it. Check it’s wiki. There’s also a science-related Yacy version called ScienceNet

boinc: With boinc you can let your CPU and GPU work for a good cause. It offers many projects for different aims, e.g. finding cures for diseases, predicting earthquakes, search life in outta space, etc. There’s also an Android client!

bitcoins: Why not letting your server or computer earn bitcoins for you, that you can even sell for real money? I’m using ufaminer for this on the bitcoin.cz pool (which seems to be better than deepbit.net in my opinion)

It offers a quick-start guide and downloads that you can use to make projects like Seti@home working on armel/armhf devices such as the Raspberry Pi.
Basically you just need to delete the content of the directory /var/lib/boinc/projects/setiathome.berkeley.edu/
and download setiathome_enhanced and app_info.xml into it. Make sure to assign the projects folder to the boinc user via “chown -R boinc:boinc projects/” while in the boinc main folder.
Lastly, attach the Seti@home project to Boinc as explained here.

If that won’t do the trick for you, you’ll need to compile boinc+setiathome yourself, reboot, et voila – it works! Now your Raspberry Pi is finally searching for Aliens out there
The easiest way to compile Seti@home and Boinc is to use my script: installseti.sh

Some notes to spare you stress and wondering while compiling:

You should purge all boinc related software before starting (apt-get purge boinc*)

If the scripts demand for libtoolize, install it via “apt-get install libtool“

If the boinc client gives you authorization errors, you’re in the wrong directory; just change to the boinc data directory (the one that contains the subfolder “projects” – standard should be /var/lib/boinc) and try again

If boinc still refuses to get tasks because of incompatible system,
delete the content of the directory /var/lib/boinc/projects/setiathome.berkeley.edu/
and download setiathome_enhanced and app_info.xml into it

Getting absent file or checksum errors? Copy the compiled executable from /usr/local/src/seti_boinc/client (should be named e.g. “setiathome-6.97.armv6l-unknown-linux-gnu“) to /var/lib/boinc/projects/setiathome.berkeley.edu/ as “setiathome_enhanced“. Make sure the app_info.xml is in the same path.

At the end you might want to install the boinc-manager (apt-get install boinc-manager). It asks you if it’s supposed to replace existing parts – make sure to select “n” for no.

I’ve put together a script you just need to run for compiling and configuring boinc+setiathome, see below. Of course all credits go to Daniel Carrison, who made the original. Just download this script: installseti.sh, chmod +x it (chmod +x installseti.sh) and then run it (./installseti.sh).

Now you might want to install boinc-manager via apt-get.Make sure to not replace any existing data! Next, start BOINC in daemon mode using the daemon parameter; you might also want to add the allow_remote_gui_rpc parameter (uses the password from the file gui_rpc_auth.cfg) to be able to view boincs status on external devices via manager:

Again – running boinc or boinccmd must be done in /var/lib/boinc folder!
If you did all correctly, Seti@home will now start to work after a few downloads (e.g. check CPU usage with “top”).
This is the time to start the boinc-manager on your favorite GUI. If you prefer viewing BOINC in console, kill it (killall boinc) and start it undaemonized (boinc).

Please leave a comment if this isn’t working for you or you’re experiencing any issues.
For possible issues and fixes, please scroll up to my notes.
Of course I’d also be happy about any positive feedback

When plugging in your USB drives (or sticks) into the Raspberry Pi, they get automatically mounted and are accessible. So far, so good. The next step is to make them accessible over the networ, even for Windows PCs. Here are 2 good tutorials on how to do that (I personally had to mix them to get it working):

Even when it’s just a few dozen kilohashes you’ll get with this miner, it’s still a nice project.
And with improving hardware and improving of the miners code, I’m sure there will be even more possible.

There are plenty of video converter apps out there, but the best are certainly Ultra Video Converter (Win) and Total Video Converter (Win); simply because they support all video and audio formats on the market, are small and easy to use. I recommend to just install both, in case the converting result of one is not as expected.

There’s different approaches to fetch and send emails as anonymously as possible, for example trashmail-services and anonymous mailer applications.

Unfortunately trash-mail services usually can’t be used via POP3/IMAP and so are only web-based; but the best anonymous email inbox service is for sure the one from HideMyAss, since it offers the most features (like auto-expiration and notification emails): https://hidemyass.com/anonymous-email/

Emails sent with anonymous mailer apps usually never arrive because they are considered spam somewhere along the way. But I found a working one, which delivered all my test emails properly: the Mixminion Message Sender: mms.zip (Website)

You should be aware that your browser reveals much information about you – see below for some examples (turn off AdBlock if you don’t see anything). For how it’s done, check the sourcecode. You can use browser-addons like Ghostery (Firefox + Chrome) and NoScript (Firefox) / NotScript (Chrome) to stop your browser from giving away this and other information.

There are plenty of different ways to install Firefox on Linux – which you should do, since Iceweasel or other standard-browsers keep crashing or just don’t have the same functionality. However, the easiest way is to just run this in terminal:

If you worked all your life on Windows computers, and then suddenly encounter a Mac system – this might be problematic, especially if you’re supposed to know basic Mac stuff; e.g. for Work or when you suddenly find yourself on a Mac via remote desktop. That’s why it’s a good idea to train yourself a bit on a virtual machine. Unfortunately I was unable to get newer MacOSX versions running, only Leopard worked out-of-the-box. Downloads below:

Unfortunately 3 South Park episodes are not available on the (international!!) South Park – pages. So you have to download them via torrent, or watch them here

South Park – S05E04 – “Super Best Friends”: Magnet Link + Torrent + Watch onlineStan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny discover David Blaine, magician and cult leader, performing in the streets of South Park. Stan finds out early that the Blainiacs are not as nice as everyone thinks. He tries to convince the other boys they’ve been brainwashed, but they have forsaken their friends and families. Teaming up with Jesus, Stan calls upon all the Super Best Friends to destroy the magician and thwart the mass suicide pact he has launched.

South Park – 200: Magnet Link + Alt. Magnet Link+ Watch online
This show marked South Park’s 200th episode. Led by Tom Cruise, two hundred celebrities, previously ridiculed by the town of South Park, file a class action lawsuit. They demand immunity from ever being made fun of again. When Stan begs them to accept his apology, they offer impossible terms and the boys ask the Super Best Friends for help.

South Park – 201: Magnet Link + Watch online
In the exciting conclusion to this two-part blockbuster celebrating South Park’s 200th episode, angry celebrities, violent ginger kids, and Mecha Streisand face off against the Super Best Friends and the South Park faithful. It’s a destructive battle on the largest scale, but all everyone wants to know is, “Who is Eric Cartman’s father?”

When I was using Gnome3 on Debian-Wheezy, I experienced the issue that gnome kept creating new processes of “gdm-simple-slave” – hundreds of them, slowing my server down extremely.
I was unable to find the cause of this issue, however, bugs like that are to be expected when using Wheezy. So I decided to try LXDE again. On my previous attempt this was problematic, because tightvncserver refused to work with it and kept bringing me to my old Gnome desktop – although I followed instructions to reconfigure tightvncserver correctly. Now I gave it another try, with different instructions. It worked – now I’m happily using LXDE on my server, instead of gnome. And that infinite-process problem is gone. Here’s how to:

As you may know, you can easily afford the costs of a dedicated server by just creating virtual machines on it for yourself and your friends. Just rent a few additional IPs (usually around 1€/IP), et voila! Everyone has his own server.

Something you should know: If you don’t want to fight with the network configuration on both host machine and VMs, better create containers (CTs) instead of virtual machines (VMs). Although you then may be restricted to use Linux distributions and have less possible settings, it will surely save you a lot of stress, time and effort.

And – when creating containers, you’ll most likely do this with templates. Note that proxmox by default seems to only offer 32 bit (i386) templates of various Linux distributions, for whatever reason. Download the 64 bit (amd64) templates to /var/lib/vz/template/cache from http://download2.proxmox.com/appliances/system/ before you create your containers, so you can select the desired template in Proxmox.

I can recommend dedicated servers at Webtropia and Netrouting. You should always prefer a dedicated server, since virtual private servers usually always have limitations regarding what you’re allowed to do with them, how much CPU power you may use etc.

One annoying fact with Cloud services like Dropbox, Asus Webstorage or box.net is their space limit. Usually its a few GB, which you can extend by referring new users, or you have to pay for it. Mostly more than the space is really worth, and still you cannot save your whole HD on it.

Now there is ownCloud: http://owncloud.org/
It works the same way as Dropbox, and has the same functionality.
Just install it on your webspace (easiest via Softaculous) and configure it.
I recommend getting cheap and good webspace e.g. from namecheap.com

Et voila – you have your own cloud, whose space is only limited by your webspace amount; and since webspace is cheaper (or even free from Zymic) than “usual” cloud services, this is the best way to make your data accessible from anywhere.

This can easily be fixed by editing the files JvDialogs.pas and JvPageSetup.pas (located in folder \jvcl\run) with NotepadPad++.
In the Notepad++ menu, select “ANSI” under “Encoding” and save the files.

In case you installed Clockworkmod Recovery onto your Android device, you might encounter a serious bug that results in booting into Recovery each time. The only way to get into your system is a “cold-boot” (keep pressing power+VolDown, then select Android).

But if your device is already rooted, this is much much easier. Before you test the method described now, please read all the comments to this article. Users of some devices (like Asus Transformer) report that this fixed the problem, while users of other devices (e.g. SGS+) reported a soft-brick as result. Be careful – you’re doing this on your own risk!

Now, enter “su” to get root access. Superuser might ask you for authorization.

Then enter

echo boot | dd of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p3 bs=1 seek=0

(please triple-check for mistyping!!!)

Reboot. Your device should now work normal again.
Hope it worked so easily for you as it did for me on my Transformer TF101G.

ATTENTION:

As you can read in the comments to this blog post, using this method works great for some devices, while it seems to have resulted in a soft-brick for other devices (e.g. SGS+) I strongly recommend to first research the web for alternative ways to fix the bootloop issue which are ESPECIALLY MADE FOR YOUR DEVICE. I also recommend to collect links to unbrick tutorials (see xda forums, Google and Youtube), so you immediately have some tools ready to unbrick your device. You might be required to reflash original-firmware or custom ROMs on your device in the end.

The “cold-boot” way to get into your system (as described in this blog post) is only available for certain devices, like the ASUS Transformer 101(g). Some custom recovery systems also have a terminal-feature that you could try to run the command on. If your device does not offer a cold-boot or any way to get into terminal-mode, your options area) try all wipe/format/reset options within Clockworkmod Recovery until you’re get into your system again (note that of course all your data will be lost)b) download either the original firmware for your device or a custom rom and flash it to your device. You can do this with Clockworkmod Recovery or from your computer via USB, using adb and 3rd party tools. This will also overwrite your bootloader and fix the bootloop issue. For links and downloads, please check all subforums for your device in the xda forums.

Should you experience problems with connecting to a VPN on iOS or Android devices via PPTP protocol, first thing to try would be L2TP protocol. Should you also experience problems here, it’s time to use OpenVPN.

On iOS, you need to have a jailbroken device. On Android devices, there are 2 ways to connect via OpenVPN; one without need of root access using FeatVPN (a tutorial for this will follow) and one where root is needed. Find the instructions here:

Ever tried Kylix 3.0 Enterprise or Open Edition for Linux? If yes, tell me how you managed to install it – it seems to be just incompatible with newer Linux distros… according to my trials and lots of sources on the web.

If you need to decide – I can not recommend those cheap tablets like the Viewsonic 10s – they easily get broken and can’t even be reset’ed. Better get the Asus Transformer TF101G – it’s worth the money!